“I’d rather wave a mop than wither in class”: students dream of duty

A good example is Belarus: a country whose main association is with the phrase “It’s clean.” Schools, too. And there, the best on duty are encouraged to have lunch without a queue or to go on vacation earlier than the whole class. What can we think of? Among others, the idea of sending children on excursions was voiced, but for some reason neither parents nor teachers appreciated it. Already loaded to the limit, teachers are afraid of unnecessary burden and responsibility.

“A class of at least 30 people,” Tatiana Mikhailovna, class leader of 7 “B,” explains her position in a private conversation. - And here they are wonderfully guarded and waiting for the promised excursion. Who will lead them to her? Subjects have all the clocks. And even if you persuade, for example, a physical assistant, as the youngest, to lead a class in his free time, then additional difficulties immediately arise. First, with one teacher, no one will let 30 people go. So we need to look for other free teachers or parents willing to accompany. Other teachers of a foreign class are not obliged to lead anywhere, so, as they say, they will transfer the arrows to the class leader, that is, me. And even schoolchildren just so, if you do not take a tour, it must be approved from above. And even the kindest physical assistant will want extra pay for extra hours. And I'm right, because getting kids out of school is a huge responsibility.

Many moms and dads from the idea of excursions are also not delighted: they are worried about the child.

- Yes, I just can’t work if I know that my Temka somewhere dragged with the whole class! – admits the mother of the Sochi fifth grader. In our school from the 5th grade is already on duty - flowers in the classroom are watered, desks are wiped, nothing complicated. I believe that it is useful, Artem after duty even in his room began to clean – somehow the teacher was able to motivate them. But for the sake of this, taking children somewhere is only exposing them to unnecessary danger. We have scheduled excursions, at the beginning of the year we announced the list, wishing parents gave money, do not want refused. Not everyone enjoys having their children transported by public transport and taken to public places, even if it is an approved and well-organized tour. And some overtime as a reward for duty parents of our class, for example, immediately did not like.

As for turning duty into a kind of relay, where the winning class is waiting for the cup, teachers are confused by the organization of this action.

- It should be someone to judge, compare, says Igor Petrovich, head teacher from the Moscow region. And don’t forget, if one class has a conditional cup, then the other has a resentment than they tried harder? And parents have questions, why are our children “sentenced”? Despite the suspicions of some parents, school duty is not the work of a cleaner, which can be judged by its quality. This is more about teaching children that school is a second home, and in the places where you live and study, you need to keep clean. And not wait for the “servants”, as, alas, some students do here, who will come and clean everything up for you.

Cleaning the school as a competition was not news for some parents, as well as grandparents of current schoolchildren who remember duty at the Soviet school.

- Our duty has always been a competition between classes, recalls Alla Evgenyevna, the grandmother of the current sixth-grader. The results were posted at the end of each quarter and held a meeting on them. The class that cleaned the best was praised, and the worst was shamed. Special inspectors for each duty was allocated by the school committee of the Komsomol from its activists. It was usually a high school couple, a boy and a girl. They walked around the floors with a white rag and checked the quality of duty. They walked her through the windowsills and the plinths. I remember crying when those boards got our class in the worst and we were taken apart at the meeting! And it's all about mastic, this is such a red, stained substance, which in those days rubbed the school flooring. Just wipe those plinths white when someone runs past them, and they're all red again!

The students themselves reacted best to the idea, they liked both excursions and cups ... just so as not to sit in lessons.

- Great idea! - rejoices eighth-grader Misha from New Moscow. We have three shifts in school and the teachers are the same. So after school, they can’t do anything – no trips, no relays – just instead. I'd rather wave a mop than stun in class.